Is it me, or is buying gifts getting increasingly harder? On the one hand, finding gifts online is easier than ever, and getting your friends a birthday gift no longer requires endless strolling on the streets. Most gifts can be bought online, without even leaving your chair, which makes the buying process easy enough. But what about the other side of things?

In the past, an unwanted gift could be easily exchanged. All you had to do was go to the nearest store and replace your gift with something else you love. But have you ever tried exchanging a gift purchased online? It’s not that it’s impossible – most websites have this option – but you have to pack your gift, ship it out, fill in a form, wait for what can amount to several weeks, and hope that the package really does get to you one day. Wouldn’t it be great if your friends could choose their gift in the first place? This is what SendAsGift.com is here for.

What is SendAsGift?

SendAsGift is a handy web app aimed exclusively and giving gifts. Through this website you can send gift suggestions to your friends, have them choose what they like or don’t like, get their accurate shipping information, and even find good prices and coupons for your gift.

You can use SendAsGift in two ways; either connect the web app with your Facebook account, for easy access to your friends and free birthday reminders, or just enter your e-mail address to use without creating an account.

Sending Gift Suggestions

Finding your gift is super easy with SendAsGift. If you already have an exact URL for your gift, simply paste into the box. You can also enter the name of the gift, and have SendAsGift look it up for you.

If you enter something general, such as the above Sigg bottle, the web app will find several options from Amazon which you can browse through to find one you like. If you can’t find something you like, you can always go looking on different websites and use a specific URL.

Now is the time to log in using Facebook, or simply enter your e-mail address. You can send the offer to your friend via Facebook (if you’re logged on), e-mail or text message. You can also include a short message, where you can ask your friends to specify their favorite color/size/etc., and choose whether the message includes a photo of the product or not. Prices are removed from these messages automatically.

Once you hit the “Send as gift” button, your friend will receive a message telling him that you want to buy this gift. The message will include a link to a specific SendAsGift page which can be viewed on mobile as well.

Now all you have to do is sit and wait to find out if your friend likes it!

Accepting, Declining & Buying

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are the receiver. Once you click the link, you’ll be able to see a photo of the gift, if included, and either accept or decline the gift.

If you accept, you will now be able to enter your full name, shipping address and phone number. You can also include notes such as size, color, etc. (If you want to make sure your friends include information you need, make sure to ask them specifically when you send them the gift suggestion).

If this is not the gift for you, you can hit decline, and enter a reason, a note, or something you’d rather have instead.

Either way, once your friend answers, you will receive a notification about the decision.

Note that since I did not connect the web app to my Facebook account, the whole experience is a little impersonal (my e-mail is not actually my name), but this is a small price to pay for the simplicity of having no signup process. If you want a more personal experience, use the Facebook option.

Now that your friend accepted the gift, click the attached link to find a good price, and even some discounts and coupons. This doesn’t always work the same, and depends on the gift you chose. If, for example, you chose a t-shirt from threadless.com like I did, the price comparison is not very effective. The coupon feature, however, proved highly useful for this.

If you chose a more conventional gift, like, say, an iPod Touch, the price comparison feature can come in quite handy.

Note that the buying itself is done through the website of your choosing, not through SendAsGift; it simply acts as a messenger between you and your friends regarding choosing the gift. But isn’t that the hardest part?

SendAsGift is great if you already have some gift ideas in mind. If you can’t think of anything, services like Wantful can help you find some suitable ideas.

Do you know of other great ways to make gift giving fun? Let us know in the comments.

It's very similar to getKarma, but it's a web app, when getKarma is only for mobile if I remember correctly. The features are also slightly different, but the main idea is the same and so is the end result, probably.

I've never heard of Wrap. I looked around and found an app that helps you figure out how to wrap gifts and how much paper you'd need, were you referring to that one?